Gun law

[talons]

I hate to bring this up again but just a little FYI. Ohio, one of the most adament states against concealed carry laws thus far, has just cleared a major hurdle on the way to adopting the concealed carry law in the state. The State House of Reps. voted 60 to 27 to adopt a concealed carry plan. Next, is on to the Senate then the Gov.😀 😀

 

[strtbottomjim]

The main thing pushing the legislature is a series of wins in the state court system, challenging the total CCW ban on both equal protection grounds and violations of the state's "right to keep and bear arms" clause. The courts could end up throwing the whole state into "Vermont carry" (no permit at all needed to pack!) and that's a bigger nightmare than fairly issued CCW permits with training and background checks.

For more info on that court attack:

http://www.saf.org/pub/rkba/press-releases/ModifiedStayVictory.htm

(Note: "equal protection" came in because the plaintiffs showed that some elite people were able to pack on a "special deputy" status linked to cronyism and even campaign contributions. Much like what we see in California, New York, New Jersey and the other remaining "discretionary carry permit" states.)

 

[red indian]

"The right to bear arms"

Charlton Heston and all the other gun crazies always trot out this rather thread bare piece of the American constition in defence of their position, but do any of them read the rest of the paragraph?

 

[shark]

The rest of the paragraph has been "translated" numerous ways by numerous people.In an earlier post on this,I had pointed out that the 5th circuit court HAS ruled the 2nd amendment to be an INDIVIDUAL right.I also posted that the supreme court has ostensibly refused to hear the case,making the 5th circuit decision law.Since the post,no one has said any different about the supreme court's decision.
The louisiana supreme court has also ruled that rights belong to the people,not governments.This rules out the argument that states have the right to form militias.
The states themselves have various forms of the 2nd amendment in their own constitutions and laws.
One thing is clear,however...people who live outside the US have quite a bit of trouble understanding this facet of US law.That's ok though..nobody asks you to understand it any more than we are expected to understand why UK citizens would allow authorities to seize legally owned personal property,without due process or just compensation,without a major revolt.

 

[strtbottomjim]

Law professor Stephen Halbrook answered the "militia question" conclusively in 1984, in his work "THAT EVERY MAN BE ARMED
The Evolution of a Constitutional Right":

http://www.independent.org/tii/catalog/cat_TEMBA.html

Basically, our first and second amendments mirror the only two articles of the English Bill Of Rights of 1688 that imparted individual rights to English Protestants (and also labeled one and two): a right to petition the crown for redress of grievances, and a right to keep and bear arms. (The rest of the 1688 BoR covered restrictions on the crown, this was just after the English Civil War.)

The US Founding Fathers were responding to the number one way in which the British right was violated, via laws against groups of armed citizens. In effect, our 2nd Amendment was written to preserve the most radical type of arms-bearing, by armed "ad-hoc groups" not necessarily under direct state control.

Look at the "necessary to the security of a free state" language - in this they were writing in accord with the leading proponents of an armed citizenry capable of deterring state tyrrany, such as Locke, Sidney and Machiavelli (yes, the author of "The Prince" - that wasn't all he wrote, and he was elected captain of a citizen militia in his town and was extremely popular with the troops he fought beside).

Now, if you want to REALLY choke, look into the 2nd Amendment implications of the 14th Amendment! The 14th Amendment "transmuted" the 2nd from it's original meaning as a "political right" akin to jury duty and voting, and into a "personal defense right" against both banditry and state abuse. See also Halbrook's work above, or Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar's "The Bill Of Rights" (1998) available at any good bookstore, in which radical liberal Amar accidently re-discovered Halbrook's findings on the 14th via the debates surrounding it from 1866 to 1868 (and Amar genuinely hated what he found, it's hilarious!). For an introduction to 14th Amendment gun rights issues, see also:

https://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?id=3202

 

[strtbottomjim]

Yo Shark: the US Supreme Court has NOT yet denied cert on US vs Emerson (5th Circuit ruling that the RKBA is an individual right). See also http://www.saf.org

Since the 5th and 9th Circuits are now in total opposition, it's a good bet the Nine Robes In DC *will* take the case.

 

[red indian]

Good!

Well I,m glad we cleared that one up.So tell me about this guy who takes my propety without due process when does that happen?

 

[shark]

Thanks to strtbottom for clearing the question up about the Supreme court.
Red...didn't you recently have a gun confiscation in the UK? Or were the guns illegally obtained,or just rented?

 

[strtbottomjim]

Shark: even if the Supremes don't hear Emerson, we still have the 5th and 9th Circuits in direct opposition. The issue WILL come up, and inside of the next 2 to 5 years tops.

Red Indian:

If you're saying that due process rights on property takings are getting trampled on in any number of circumstances, you're right.

The biggest abuses come from the "War On (Some) Drugs", where property gets confiscated even without criminal charges filed. Then there's fraudulent use of emminent domain to transfer real estate from private citizens for the use of other, richer private citizens who do major campaign contributions.

Yup. ALL our civil rights are in danger. Where you been lately? The fact that it's happening is all the more reason we need to have the government fear us, rather than the other way around.

 

[red indian]

Stick em up!

Strt....Its not me saying anything, it was a question to shark who suggested Britain has a major problem with illegal confiscation of property, I am not aware of this and wanted to know more.


Shark....Yes we did have a major government offensive on privately (and legally) owned arms which was a reaction to a gun massacre in a small town in England (I dont recall the name) as a result all hand guns and semi automatic weapons are illegal and i believe all gun clubs and shooting ranges have been closed. Despite these measures we have a gun crime epidemic at the moment and London is now considered more dangerous than New York.

 

[strtbottomjim]

Red I: didn't know you were in Britain.

I don't know enough about the state of British property seizures to comment on that.

I'm puzzled by your calling Heston and company "gun crazies" but at the same time realizing that the British gun bans have been a disaster? In the US, the states with the lowest crime rates are the ones that allow packing "on the streets", loaded and concealed, provided you've passed a background check and minimal training (what we call a "CCW permit"). We have over 5 million people thus legally armed, and there's NOTHING street thugs hate worse 😀.

 

[Frink]

In the US, the states with the lowest crime rates are the ones that allow packing "on the streets", loaded and concealed, provided you've passed a background check and minimal training (what we call a "CCW permit").

Not to rain on any parades, but this is not proof of anything. It's yet another misleading and/or woefully inadequate statistic. I'm sure few would find issue with even 100% of a state's population being armed (carrying concealed) if that state is not densely populated and already has a low crime rate (e.g., Vermont). Go back far enough and I'm sure there were no gunlaws anywhere. A great many laws (logically) get added as crime and population density increases and as need dictates. If the crime and population density stay manageably small, there's no need to adopt stricter laws.

100% of an armed population in the state of Vermont (<610k as of 2001) is NOT going to be very analogous to a 100% armed population in NYC alone (>8M as of 2000). Those are 2 entirely different animals, and the laws should reflect that.

 

[red indian]

Yep i am a Limey!

I dont think the new Brit gun laws were a disaster, they do not appear to have solved the problem of increasing gun crime but they can hardly be classed as a disaster. I understand Switzerland has more guns than people but one of the lowest rates of gun related crime in the world so I dont pretend to know the answers.

 

[BigJim]

I agree with Shark (and not just because he's my campaign manager! LOL)

I am hearing you on FM Shark. I was neither an owner nor an enthusiast, but I was foaming at the mouth with rage when that legislation was passed. This may offend many people who feel sympathy for the relatives of Dunblaine, but those laws were enacted in a fit of national mass hysteria.
The changes to the law have done absoloutley bugger all to restrict gun crime in this country and I knew at the time that it was just politicians pandering for votes. Some of you may think it's funny for someone in my occupation being in favour of gun ownership, (even if I'm not as enthusiastic as someone like Charlton Heston) but I saw the anti-gun laws as a major breach of property rights to handgun owners.
The reason there wasn't an open revolt to it, was because firearms were never an intrinsic part of the average british household and Joe Public is indifferent to the matter. On the whole, the politicians actions make me sicker than a dog!!

 

[CitY of MicA]

attacking an unarmed indian- for shame!

I believe Frink has hit the nail on the head. The idea of riding a crowded subway train with over a 100 people in your car carrying handguns is a very scary thought. Most small towns don't possess public transportation and there may be no more than 100 people in a 1/2 mile radius.

I thought the murder rate in England was quite low 😕 .

 

[strtbottomjim]

CitY of MicA: Britain's murder rate is climbing fast. It may not have hit overall US rates yet, but it's gone past a lot of states...and the overall US rate has been dropping. Rates of all other violent crime except rape I think, passed the US some time ago, especially "street muggings" and "hot burglary" (where the homeowner is home at the time).

Frink: you've missed a *major* causative factor here.

Think about the most violent cities in the US, starting with Chicago and WashDC. Both have the strictest gun control in the nation, with a near-total ban on handgun ownership even in the home, and no legal street carry. They trade off nearly every year for the title of "highest per-capita murder rate city in the US", a dubious "honor".

What do they have in common?

High minority populations.

Name any major city in the US with heavy gun control, and it'll have a high minority population. The ones that historically haven't had many minorities (Portland OR, Seattle WA, Provo UT, etc) also haven't had heavy gun control.

*Every* idea in gun control in the US originally started out as either a minority control measure or propped up slavery in the South prior to the Civil War. See also historian Clayton Cramer's "The Racist Roots Of Gun Control", 1995, published in a history journal having nothing to do with the gun movement:

http://www.law.ukans.edu/jrnl/cramer.htm

Example: you've heard the term "Saturday Night Special" in reference to a cheap handgun? You know the origin of that term? Circa 1890 or so, a series of wild violent happenings would be referred to as a (used for scholarly purposes only guys, I don't like it either!) "Niggertown Saturday Night". In other words, white society expected the "black part of town" to erupt in violence now and again. And the mindset at the time was that as long as no white bodies turned up, the cops didn't care. Strict gun control laws applied solely to blacks meant that honest blacks couldn't defend themselves against the growing criminal class in their communities...especially since the honest blacks needed to leave the urban ghettos to work. Armed black criminals were safe from the police only so long as they stayed in their own communities and preyed on their own race. Ever wonder at the origins of the horrendous rates of black-on-black murder even today? Now you know. It was deliberately fostered over generations, and strong gun control in the inner cities was a designed-in part of the program and even though the gun control laws are mostly being applied on a race-neutral basis (although NOT always!), urban gun control still ensures that armed criminals have an easily accessable local pool of unarmed victims.

You think I'm blowing smoke here?

In 1941, a Florida Supreme Court decision freed a white dude who was packing a handgun without the required carry permit. The reason he was freed? As FL Supreme Court Justice Buford put it:

"I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied." — Watson v. Stone, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941) from Clayton Cramer’s “Racist Roots Of Gun Control”

(Note: Florida abandoned the "discretionary" (read: "discriminatory") style of gun permits in 1986. Since then, over 350,000 people in that state have obtained carry permits, with a background check and training...and their murder rates, especially in the inner-city Miami area, have been dropping since, and dropping faster than the overall US rate.)

If you eliminate just one type of murder in the US, black-on-black urban crime, the US murder rate would drop almost to average European levels. I'm not saying this as a racist; on the contrary, we're seeing deliberate racist laws STILL IN EFFECT that are having disasterous consequences and need to be $hitcanned ASAP.

 

[mysterytic]

Falacies of gun control laws

Falacies: 2d amendment words "The need for a well regulated militia"
Claim: This applies to the military, not an individual right
Reality: The militia of old purchased their own weapons and kept them at home. Show me where that happens today in the military. All other 9 amendments are INDIVIDUAL rights, not a statement granting power to the federal government. Conveniently the anti second amendment people fail to recognize that.

Claim: The militia is the National Guard which the second amendment applies to.
Reality: The National Guard was created in 1903, the constitution was ratified in 1789. Can't be.

Claim: Certain firearms are more deadly those so call "Assault Weapons"
Reality: Anti gun forces have convinced law makers that LOOKS are what determine the firearms effectiveness. Assault weapons, by definition held by all internation armies, are defined as being:
1) Selective fire, meaning capable of continuous firing while trigger is depressed
2) Fire an intermediate powered cartridge. Examples are 7.62x39, 5.56 mm, and AK 74 round.

The 1994 act passed by congress and signed by Bill Clinton puts look alike semi automatic (not selective fire) rifles into the same category as those all ready banned from manufacture and importation under the National Firearms Act of 1934. These rifles, which look just like the selective fire military arms, are even less dangerous than most semi automatic hunting rifles due to their lesser powered cartridge (Most hunting rifles shoot high powered cartridges, not intermediate powered cartridges)

Until the american people wake up, the misinformation will continue to errode their ability to defend themselves, hunt, plink, target shoot, and collect. I could go on forever with this subject.

 

[Frink]

You think I'm blowing smoke here?

Perhaps not intentionally, but...well, you asked. 😛 The "smoke" in your post is just the fact that this is being made (in part) to be a racial discussion, but it really should not be.

So to address the smoke...

If you want "causative factors" of crime and hence crime laws you can MUCH more easily trace those to some combination of the following factors:
1) Poverty
2) Lack of education
3) Lack of opportunities for advancement and/or employment
4) Dense population
5) Oppression and/or injustice and/or widespread or suffering

Note that slavery created conditions for all of the above (just for AfAms for the most part) purposely from the very beginning, segregation kept it inside the AfAm community, and racism perpertuated it all to some degree. Still, look to where these conditions exist--anywhere, independent of race--and I suspect you will see elevated crime rates among those people. Instill hopelessness and a sense of "nothing to lose" and you create conditions which can make criminals of almost anyone.

Why so much Black-on-Black crime? Simple. That's who's closest...always has been (i.e., segregation). No big mystery there.

Why cities like Chicago, and DC? Those are among the several major northern cities AfAms migrated to in the greatest numbers looking for jobs & opportunities--which, of course due to racism, didn't really materialize...not for a very long time....slowly... Hence, the conditions for high crime--and volatility (e.g., riots)--were fostered all the more.

OK....now to address the substance...

Regardless, your last post *illustrates* more than it refutes one of the main points of my last one. That was simply that the conditions (despite what created those conditions) precipitated the stricter laws; the stricter laws did not precipitate the conditions (i.e., the crime). Needless to say, given that, there is little or no basis for saying that easing gun laws will reduce the crime or make the situation better--without making any others worse (a feat in and of itself).

I personally think anyone should be allowed to have a gun in their own home, but would not be at ease with having everyone who "feels they need protection" carrying concealed. That's basically due to the reasons stated in my last post. Again, in some situations, places, locales, that's fine; they can handle it without too many consequences. That's just not going to be true in all scenarios, cities, states, etc. because they're just not all equal.

😎

 

[strtbottomjim]

Quoting Frink:

"That was simply that the conditions (despite what created those conditions) precipitated the stricter laws; the stricter laws did not precipitate the conditions (i.e., the crime)."

Wrongo! That's what you've got backwards. The racist laws created the climate of crime, and the racist laws included, as part of the package, gun control aimed specifically at minorities. Granted, there were also a buttload of OTHER racist laws and practices going on too, but gun control was a key factor and the most common remaining piece of the "Jim Crow structure" today.

Notice that Florida Supreme Court statute quoted above? The reason the original bill was REALLY passed in 1893 was that a KKK raiding party had tried to invade a black township outside of Gainsville, FL and was repelled by black residents using revolvers and lever-action rifles in a pitched gun battle. They ended up piling white-sheet-clad corpses on the edge of town. In large part, Buford is fulla $hit, the real cause of that law wasn't to prevent black crime, but to prevent black *self defense* - against white criminals.

I doubt you'll read Clayton's article, but here's one quote you may find interesting:

"[N]o freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife, and on conviction thereof in the county court shall be punished by fine, not exceeding ten dollars, and pay the cost of such proceedings, and all such arms or ammunition shall be forfeited to the informer; and it shall be the duty of every civil and military officer to arrest any freedman, free negro, or mulatto found with any such arms or ammunition, and cause him or her to be committed to trial in default of bail."

- Mississippi statute of 1865, cited by professors Cottrol and Diamond in "The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration", 80 Geo. L.J 1991, 309-361 (1991), http://www.guncite.com/journals/cd-recon.html

That statute was written immediately after the Civil War. It *pre-dates* the rise of any significant "urban black ghettos", and is one of numerous examples cited by Cottrol and Diamond.

As blacks moved North, racist laws got enacted there too.

In 1925, a black doctor name of Henry Sweet moved his family to a white suburb of Detroit, Michigan. A lynch mob formed across the street and after days of unrest, charged the house. At least six members of the Sweet family fired into the crowd, killing one and wounding another. The cops arrested the entire family. Civil Rights attorney Clarence Darrow defended them in court, and won a total victory on grounds of self defense even with an all-white jury.

Enraged by this incident, the KKK lobbied the MI legislature which in 1927 copied earlier Southern "discretionary gun permit" rules in an attempt to disarm minorities...for reasons exactly mirroring Florida in 1893.

Let me be blunt here: self defense is a basic human right. To interfere with it is *evil*, and will never have a good result.

Quoting Frink again:

"I personally think anyone should be allowed to have a gun in their own home, but would not be at ease with having everyone who "feels they need protection" carrying concealed."

Five years ago, I had death threats against me that first led me to seek one of these permits (unsuccessfully, because Calif still has the old "discretionary" issuance system abandoned now by Florida, Michigan *and* Mississippi).

At that time, widedspread issuance seemed scary to me too. But instead of theorizing on what would happen, I sent out about two dozen EMails to street cops in the shall-issue states, such as Florida, Oregon, Washington (state), Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alaska, etc. I asked those street cops whether or not permitholders were causing problems. The universal answer: no. People willing to go through background checks and training were NOT causing problems, and often were more "allies" of law enforcement in that they're more willing to report crime without fear of retaliation, because their civil right to self defense was no longer being abused by authority at the same time criminals abused them.

I can also show you dozens of stories like this one:

http://www.detnews.com/2002/metro/0203/21/a01-445943.htm

Michigan converted to "shall issue" just last year. The title of the above story says it all: "Gun permits surge, but not violence". There is NO evidence from any of the 33 states and counting with fair access to legal self defense that it causes a problem!

 

[Frink]

strtbottomjim:

You're quotes of mine are out of context, and hence, misinterpreted. Check again. I'm not wrong about what precipitated what,because we agreed...to an extent. Slavery, rascism, etc. created the environment for the crimes (the conditions I listed previously). Once created, and maintained, those (listed) conditions created the perceived need for stricter control laws. My assertion is simply that once that environment is created, a powderkeg is born--regardless of the race of those most victimized. Society will likely respond to that, again, regardless of race. Is/was the law born of racism here? Probably. Does that change anything? No. The conditions (again, the race-neutral ones I listed by number) still exist in many places. Change those (you know, the REALLY hard problems) then you'll have less difficulty changing the law.

The second quote is also taken out of context, but I believe in an of itself it should have been better stated. Bottom line: what works in one place/area/city/state region will not necessarily work for all; they're not al the same (see conditions list again.) Prove otherwise and then you've got something.

Oh, and you can always find an example of someone who should have been granted a license. Opponents can always find examples of someone who should not have gotten a license. It cancels. Same thing holds with "correlation" stats of crime rates and trends. I try not to even respond to those at all, because it's pointless.

 

[strtbottomjim]

Quoting Frink:

"Bottom line: what works in one place/area/city/state region will not necessarily work for all; they're not al the same (see conditions list again.)"

Really? In this case, for that logic to work, you'd have to start with the premise that people willing and able to pass background checks and training are going to be harmless in one area, yet violent in another? Sorry, that just plain doesn't fly, regardless of race or economic class.

Second: I've talked to many cops in California who think exactly that, that California's population cannot be trusted with legal self defense even though it's worked in 33 other states. One cop of six years experience told me that it was because California is "more diverse" than the other states.

Well in many cases, such as Washington State, Alaska or such, there probably is a much "whiter" demographic, although I'm not personally racist enough to think it makes a difference.

But Florida has been living with widespread access to self defense for 15 years, and it's at least as "diverse" as California. In fact, the ratios of blacks and Latinos is quite close; only the somewhat lower rate of Asians is much different and there's not enough Asian crime in California for even the most die-hard racist to think that's an issue.

Good news is, I don't have to try and convince you that CCW in Florida hasn't caused problems.

I got proof:

Quoting Frink again:

"Oh, and you can always find an example of someone who should have been granted a license. Opponents can always find examples of someone who should not have gotten a license. It cancels."

The hell it does.

First, I've gone through literally thousands of permit applications from the urban areas of California. You know what *never* gets issued? Women who face domestic violence issues. Gays afraid of being gay-bashed. Who DOES get 'em? The wealthy - especially business owners who "take money to the bank". They've got political clout.

Second, if somebody is a criminal, and intends to mis-use a gun, THEY'RE NOT GOING TO NEED A CCW PERMIT. True, in a state like Florida, it's possible that a very small number of bad apples will score the permit, but to assume that such people wouldn't pack if they couldn't get the permit is just nuts.

Criminals don't obey laws. That's why they're criminals. Laws banning legal carry limit the self defense abilities of the law-abiding and don't do CRAPOLA to restrict a criminal's ability to attack.